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Winger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txLBA6Xut34): The 80's and early 90's hair band that soon became uncool after Metallica and Beavis and Butthead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfWIhygxYRg) picked on them.

According to the video, Winger had lots of problems selling their sound to producers and recording companies. Yeah, it mentioned that night after night they sold 1K tickets to do a gig. In my mind, that's a limited market where people will eventually grow tired of their act and stop buying tickets to a small concert.

I'm not saying Winger sucked or was untalented. I think the band's problem was that the 80s big hair bands came to an end with more edgy, raw music like Guns-n-roses and the new sound of Seattle/Northwest like Nirvana.

I think the entire MTV and music industry largely shunned bands who did not embrace the perceived new sound of grunge music. I can't back it up, but if you didn't agree to unplug your electric guitars and go on the "unplugged" show, you weren't going to be promoted on TV.

There were other bands like Motley Crue, Quiet Riot and Dokken who also suffered a sudden decline in popularity. Perhaps the Stuart character could have worn those t-shirts as well.

It was the towards more harder edgier stuff that killed acts like Winger not a corny cartoon.

From r/ToddintheShadow (https://www.reddit.com/r/ToddintheShadow).

Most misblamed things for career collapses (https://www.reddit.com/r/ToddintheShadow/comments/1j8arim/most_misblamed_things_for_career_collapses/)

The other notable example that gets tossed around is Winger, who often scapegoat Beavis and Butthead for ruining their career. There's a couple key problems with this though:


Beavis and Butthead didn't premier until 1993. Hair metal was already well on its way out by then. Todd refers to this and similar example as "Nirvana killed my career"...the impact was already felt well before Beavis and Butthead aired.

Beavis and Butthead roasted many artists and bands who were mostly unscathed career wise. Pavement's indie superstar status was hardly affected by their rather brutal commentary on one of their videos (Stating "This is just horrible." and "These guys are so lazy they probably take a dump in the tub.") Beavis and Butthead also roasted a bunch of metal bands who remained popular.

Beavis and Butthead actually never even roasted a Winger video. They did make fun of Winger in comments on other videos, leading to their label getting pissed and demanding to MTV that any mockery of Winger stop. So this did technically...except Mike Judge got around it by having the character Stewart intended as a laughing stock wear a Winger shirt. Didn't help Winger's reputation but at that point any hair metal band was already seen as a joke.